Thinking of making one long trip this year and head out to Yellowstone National Park. Will be traveling from mid-Missouri. Looks like we would be going through Grand Island, Nebraska, Kearney, Lexington, North Platte, Scottsbluff, Torrington, Guernsey, and Casper before getting there. Based on our previous shorter trips generally drive about 6.5-7 hours a day. Could try to push it further but generally we tend to not get started until around 9:00 and that gets us in around 4:00-4:30 given bathroom stops and stopping to get something to eat. With the drive time, this it looks like it would be a three day trip one way. Looks like a stop somewhere around Grand Island, then one around Guernsey, WY, and then to Yellowstone. But it also looks like there could be some interesting Forts to visit along the way which could slow down the travel time. Usually I would try and make all Campground reservations in advance, but if we just took our time sightseeing that wouldn't work. For you more seasoned long distance travelers, how do you handle it? Just make your reservations day to day based on what you are doing? On side note how many days do you think we should plan on staying in the Yellowstone area. Would a couple days allow us to see the major tourist areas or should I allow more time?

Try to include in your loop to/from: a. Devil's Tower, WY, b. Cody WY. Wild West and Firearm Museum and great evening tourist rodeo. Almost every night! A must! and c. on our way back we went up to Montana, and were mesmerized by the Battle of Little Bighorn National Monument. There is a LOT to see there! We only spent 3 days in Yellowstone, which was enough for us. Depends on how much of a "woodsie" you are! LOL.
The rest of the answer is that we're retired, and I try not to schedule more than 350 miles/day, and I book reservations the whole way outbound, and "catch as catch can" on the way back.

Do you have reservations for camping in Yellowstone? When we went in 2012 we had made reservations the fall before. You may want to check that out. We are finding it to be more and more difficult to find a campsite if you don't have reservations. There are so many RVs out there any more!

If you have time, there is a museum about the westward expansion near Kearney. It is built over the interstate and is worth seeing. They also have a sod house and Indian round house on site.

we never had any reservations anywhere, and we found that if you are at the gate at 11 am , that is when sites oopen up . there is a sign when you enter that says how many sites are open.at least there was 4 yrs ago. fishing bridge is like a parking lot , but you are only sleeping .

We use to make reservations. Not any more, unless it's a have to thing in a certain place. Now, we just go with the flow.
If you are retired, it's not quite as necessary as when you are still working and only have just so much time to fit everything in.

When we went out west last fall, we started going to mostly KOAs. We like to go to a place, stay a few days, see the sights and then move on. It is hard to determine ahead of time how long you want to stay in one place. We would decide a day before leaving that we are leaving the next day and would reserve at the KOA at the next destination.

We often got the last site available for our size of rig. On top of that, sometimes if we wanted to stay an extra day, we were unable to as the campground was full or reserved. This was after Labor Day! Having to reserve means you often cannot decide to stay an extra day or leave when you are ready to. It takes the spontaneity out of it. But with so many campers out there, depending on where you are, you might need to or end up at a Walmart instead if there are no campsites available.